Many years ago, I visited the house of a friend from work. She had lots of books on her shelves, of which a couple were written by Thomas Aquinas. I remarked on this, but pronounced his name Aq-kee-nus. My friend corrected me. A - kwine-mus. Her husband immediately took her to task - don't correct her. I didn't understand his concern. If I pronounce a word wrong, I want to know it. I wasn't some teenager who'd get all bent out of shape, I was a grown woman.<P>
(That's the problem with message boards. Someone uses a word incorrectly, you tell them the proper use, and they get all upset and accuse you of being the "grammar police" when what you're actually doing is trying to prevent them from making a fool of themselves if they use that word at a public meeting, in front of an employer, etc.<P>
So I immediately told the husband - "no, it's okay, I need to know the proper pronunciation." (Although truth to tell, I've never said the name Thomas Aquinas to anyone since then!)<P>
I have a large vocabulary, but I've never heard 90% of the words I know pronounced. I've acquired all these words by reading them. <P>
So of course when I'm at this spelling bee, I have to know how words are pronounced, or I won't know how to spell them!<P>
Take for example ACELDAMA. I always thought it was ass-ell-dah-ma. But according to the Pronunciation Recording at dictionary.com, it's pronounced uh-SELL-duh-MUH. ACHENE is pronounced uh-keen. ACHIOTE is pronounced aw-chee-OH-tee. And so on.<P>
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